Wednesday, July 1, 2009

At the beginning of June I participated in a Samurai parade to commemorate the historical battle of Okehazama (桶狭間古戦場まつり). The festival takes place every year in the city of Toyoake.

Some days before the festival, I was invited to take part in the promotion of the festival in the media for one day.

First, we went to the NHK offices in Nagoya where we appeared in the program Sarasara.

The stage was right at the entrance to the building and there was a clown to make the audience laugh and relax at the beginning of the program (which was in live!). The Japanese girl on the right asked her mum to record the video for us. When she gave me a copy in DVD unfortunately I coudn't see it because it was protected with CPRM. Fortunately, this protection is crackable with relCPRM (in Japanese).

After appearing in the Japanese TV (sounds cool hehe) I was invited to one of the best lunchs I have ever had in Japan. Then, we went to go on with our promotion to the Chūnichi Shinbun newspaper (中日新聞). They published it both in paper (see picture above) and on their internet website (here). Finally, we also went to a cable TV called CCNET which recorded the whole festival. Their video is here in streaming but I can't access it without a CCNET contract.

Some days later, on Saturday, we had the first rehearsal. During the parade we were going to represent the battle and I had the luck to perform the role of Kinoshita Tōkichirō (木下藤吉郎), who in the future would become Hideyoshi Toyotomi, one of the most important figures in the Japanese history.

The next day, Sunday, we did more rehearsal but this time with the real armours.

Finally, we went out, walked in the streets of Toyoake city and made our representation of the battle of Okehazama.

The representation was filmed and at the end of it, the presenter asked me some questions in Japanese :D.

Here you can see more pictures and get more information about the festival. It is the website of Kikuko, the person who invited me to the festival (thank you!), and it's probably one of the most useful websites to know what things you can do or see if you are around Nagoya.